


Another City

by Corinna



Category: Angel: the Series, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Coats, Fusion Challenge, Gen, Iraq, Missions, Snipers, offworld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-19
Updated: 2005-10-19
Packaged: 2017-12-07 07:17:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corinna/pseuds/Corinna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I prefer to work alone." An Angel/SGA fusion for the sgafusion challenge community.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another City

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://liviapenn.livejournal.com/profile)[**liviapenn**](http://liviapenn.livejournal.com/) for multiple inspirational suggestions and setting up the Atlantis Amalgamated challenge in the first place, [](http://rivkat.livejournal.com/profile)[**rivkat**](http://rivkat.livejournal.com/) for astonishingly fast and helpful beta-reading, and [](http://gchick.livejournal.com/profile)[**gchick**](http://gchick.livejournal.com/) for aid, assistance, and fight choreography.

Mal had expected things to be weird when he walked through a wormhole and ended up in another galaxy -- that much was obvious. But he wouldn't have thought one of the weird things about it would be his CO. Never mind the reporting to an Air Force flyboy -- he'd known some of them and they could be good guys. But Sheppard barely even seemed to notice his own troops: he spent more time with the geeks than the grunts, and his away team was all civilians. Mal wrote him off as a lightweight getting carried by his second until the day he got called to Sheppard's office.

"Captain Halloran. Nice job on P5X-439 last week."

"Sir, thank you, sir." The surprise was a jolt -- Major Lorne had slapped him on the back and said 'good man,' but he didn't think that securing a village against a totally non-Wraith-related giant serpent threat was the sort of thing the colonel paid much attention to.

Sheppard shook his head a little and gestured to a chair. "At ease. Have a seat." When Mal sat down, he was acutely aware of the glass walls of the office, and Sheppard's considering stare.

"I'm putting together some new long-term away teams," Sheppard said slowly. "Mixed groups of military and scientific personnel, some Athosians. We all need to work together out there. Major Lorne's recommended you to head up a team, and I thought you and I should talk first."

"What about, sir?"

"I just want to make sure it's something you'd feel comfortable with." The words were friendly, but the colonel's tone had more than a hint of skepticism. "I haven't really noticed you... _mingling_ with the civilians."

"I don't mingle, sir," Mal said. "At all."

"But you can work with civilians?"

Mal shrugged. "Did OK last week. But I prefer to work alone."

"And I'd prefer a turkey sandwich. Such is the nature of command. If you're not ready to step up and take responsibility for the people on this expedition -- all of them -- I need to know that now rather than when you're out in the field."

Sheppard's eyes were hard when Mal met them. "If it needs to be done," Mal said, "I can do it, sir."

"Now that's what I like to hear," Sheppard said. He picked up a manila folder and passed it across the desk. "Here's a list of the personnel for your new team. Talk to Teyla Emmagan about the Athosian woman; the others should be easy to find here in the city."

Not just an Athosian, an Athosian woman with no combat experience. And he'd thought Lorne liked him. Mal tried not to let his dismay show as he flipped through the file.

"Any questions, Captain?"

"No, sir."

"All right, then. Dismissed." Mal practically jumped out of his chair to go. "But before you go, can I ask? Your name's Liam Halloran. Why do they call you Mal?"

Mal wondered if the colonel knew how much he hated that question, or if he was really curious. "I picked it up in the Gulf, sir. I was a sniper."

"I read your jacket. So how does that lead to...?"

"I spent three weeks covering my unit from a minaret." Talking about it still made his skin itch, and he could swear his back started aching again. "We took a mosque from the insurgents, and we needed to hold it till reinforcements could get through. A couple of the guys started telling any friendlies they could find that my kill rate was proof Allah was on our side, not with the martyrs. Started calling me _malak al-masjid_ : the angel in the mosque. Name sort of stuck."

"Hell of a thing to be known for, Captain."

"It's just a name, sir," Mal said.

 

* * *

 

Teyla said the Athosian woman would join them the next day, so Mal went and introduced himself to the other two Earth people on the team. Dr. Wyndam-Price seemed kind of useless, and Mal figured you probably didn't go into the Marines with a name like Gunn unless you seriously had something to prove, but the man's service record was nothing to sneeze at. Gunn had made it clear that he didn't think much of the sort of Army hump who'd take his shots from a couple stories up, and Mal had implied that he thought intentionally putting yourself in the line of fire was the act of a man who hadn't thought things through sufficiently, so Sheppard's whole working-together plan was turning out pretty much exactly the way Mal had figured it would. Then the woman showed up.

"My good friend Corta Cateris," Teyla said, and Jesus, Mal had seen a lot of the Athosians, but he'd never seen this woman before, he'd have remembered her. Most of the locals looked like extras from a Xena episode, but this woman was beautiful and, well, sleek. Her clothing looked almost new, and her dress and the long shawl she'd wrapped around herself were woven with bright, intricate patterns. Corta came up to Mal and offered her forehead in the Athosian greeting, and Mal remembered in time how to follow suit.

"Pleasure to meet you, ma'am," he said, and Corta gave him a broad and ridiculously friendly smile in return. Off to one side, he could see Wyndam-Price gaping like a fish at the girl.

"The pleasure is assuredly mine, Captain." The Athosians Mal had come into contact with before were all pretty restrained people, and this girl was trying for that as well, but she was clearly too high-energy to pull it off. Too bad she didn't look like she'd be any good in a fight: she was too thin, too polished, and way too nervous.

"Corta has many friends on the world you will be visiting first," Teyla said.

"M5R-3X5," Mal said.

"Littara," said Corta.

"Whatever," Mal said. "Recon, intel, scan for anomalies, and we're out. I got the briefing. We're cool."

Teyla looked at him appraisingly for a long moment before she nodded and said, "Very well. I wish you safe travels, Captain Halloran."

Going through the Stargate was the same as always, disorienting but not unpleasant, and on the other side they were on top of a green hill, with a town just visible off to the northwest. Broad-branched trees filtered out the bright midday sun, the air was cool and vibrant like early spring, and the earth felt just barely damp beneath his boots. Mal adjusted his pack and took a deep breath. His mission. His charges. He could do this. He would lead them through their responsibilities. He would make sure their duties were appropriately executed. He would --

Corta hit him hard on the chest as she stretched out her arms like she was hugging the entire planet. She took a deep, satisfied breath and strode forward, eyes bright with excitement. "We are here! And I thought I would never make it off that dust speck."

"Huh?" It was like someone had flipped a switch: the nervousness had fallen away and he could almost swear she'd grown.

"The city of the Ancestors is very beautiful, Captain, but have you spent much time on the mainland? Boring! At least back on Athos, I had my looms, and my travels."

"You're a, a weaver?" Wyndam-Price managed.

"I am the greatest weaver my people have seen in five generations," Corta said proudly, adjusting her bright shawl to display it to best effect. "And I learned to weave not just so that I might have fine things to wear for myself, which is I must admit a great comfort, but also that I might have items to trade with on other worlds, for my own tastes as well as my people's needs."

"A weaver!" Wyndam-Price said, beaming. "Fascinating. You know, we've been so focused on basic survival, we've learned almost nothing about the native crafts of the people of the Pegasus galaxy."

"This is not really the time," Mal said.

"No, of course not." Wyndam-Price flushed, and adjusted his pack. "Still, you never know when such knowledge will come in handy. When I was an Explorer Scout, we made ourselves a tent entirely from woven forest branches and lived in it for a long weekend."

"On purpose?"

"Well, yes, of course on _purpose_ , it took time to gather all those branches together. And then the twine --"

Mal could already feel the headache coming on. "Let's just walk."

Gunn dropped back to take their six, and Mal took point, scanning the field ahead of them as they went, his rifle at the ready. Corta was walking so fast she was practically running, and the second time she ended up in his sights he snapped at her to get back behind him. She didn't look apologetic as she obeyed.

"It has been too long since I have seen the works of my fellow-artisans," she explained. "They may well have tired of the strongly-patterned fabrics we traded two harvests ago. They may have moved on to... to _stripes_ , for all I could know!"

"My understanding was that pretty much everybody in this galaxy was living in fear of having the life sucked out of them by the Wraith," Gunn said. "And you've been worrying about fashion?"

"The coming of the Wraith is no cause for us to not care for our appearances, Sergeant. If anything, it makes what beauty we can find in a flower, a tree, a perfectly-cut skirt all the more urgent to hold onto."

"I take it you've lost this argument before."

"Ah, yes," Corta said witheringly, "you must be one of the wise and learned men Teyla said were among the newcomers." She picked up her pace again, and Mal let her get almost even with him. If there had to be civilians on his team, he figured a girl willing to get up in the face of a fully-armed Marine would do.

 

* * *

 

There was a tavern near the center of town, an old building with a wide thatched roof and a shaded porch. Inside, the gas lamps gave the room a warm friendly air belied by the closed faces of the townspeople, and an open wood stove in one corner turned the slight chill in the air outside into homey warmth. Mal had Corta do the delicate negotiations that traded them a bag of Cheez Doodles for a pitcher of the local ale and some bar snacks before he let her go off in search of her friends.

Urban combat left its mark on a man. Mal could feel every single one of the locals watching him: the ways their conversations would go suddenly hushed and whispered and then back to normal again made him tense. "Try to look casual," he told his men. The ale was good enough that it was easy to make a pretense of it.

"We're not gonna learn anything just sitting here by ourselves, sir," Gunn grumbled.

"We're not gonna learn anything if they come at us with torches and pitchforks either," Mal said.

"You know, before I came to this galaxy, it never occurred to me that those might make actual, effective weapons," said Wyndam-Price. He looked almost meditative.

"Dr. Wyndam-Price..."

He raised his hand in what looked meant to be a magnanimous gesture, nearly knocking over Gunn's ale in the process. "Wesley, please."

"Wes. Don't give them ideas, OK? We'll have our beers, let them see we mean no harm."

Gunn rolled his eyes. "I'm just gonna ask the bartender how they make this stuff, OK? Maybe one of the geeks can rig up a brewery when we get back." He walked to the bar and planted himself at a seat near a set of gaslights well past Mal's peripheral vision. A couple of minutes later, Mal heard the first laugh he'd heard in the place since he'd walked in, Gunn's voice loud among the group.

"Well," said Wes finally. "Lovely weather they're having, isn't it."

"Yeah," Mal said, and refilled his mug.

Half an hour later, Wes decided to go to the bar for a glass of water, and Gunn came back to the table with a huge smile and a slap on the back for Mal. "They're hiding something," he muttered inside his grin.

"No shit," Mal said quietly. "Any idea what?"

"Nothing. Just that they're plenty willing to talk till you get them to the topic of what's new in town, at which point they clam up and change the topic. I bet -"

Gunn didn't get a chance to finish his thought, because Corta burst through the tavern doors, clutching a large stack of folded fabrics as closely to her chest as she could. "Captain!" she cried dramatically. "You must see the generous gifts my Littaran friends have given me!" When she sat down at the table, she leaned towards Mal and whispered, "They are hiding something!"

"What gave it away?" Mal asked. Gunn shook his head and sat back down in his chair as well.

"They already knew everything I was going to tell them. About how we left Athos, and Atlantis, and how we destroyed it to keep it from the Wraith. They knew it, and when I asked them how they had heard, they were evasive, and... well, I thought it best to report back."

"Ah, Miss Cateris," Wesley said, returning to the table with a large glass of ice water. "Your reunion went well, I trust?" He took a long sip of his water and shook his head regretfully. "I don't think I've been served a proper glass of water since I joined the SGC. Everyone keeps adding... _ice_." He said the last word with an almost-awed tone of discovery. "Ice!"

"And?" Mal asked.

"Ice, being ice, has to be kept cold. That made it something of a luxury item, certainly not something you'd put in a water glass for a stranger, up to about a hundred years ago on Earth." Wes had a science-crazed gleam in his eye as he turned to Corta, holding up his glass. "Tell me, does it get very cold here in the winters?"

She frowned at him. "Here? The winters are very mild: that is why the settlement here keeps being rebuilt. The nights can be quite cool, but I do not think I have ever even seen snow on the ground."

"The other way to get large amounts of ice, of course, is refrigeration," Wes said meaningfully.

"And this planet doesn't even look like it could spell 'refrigeration,'" Mal said, catching on. "OK, where there's electricity, there's a generator, right? Wes, you're with me. You two, stay here, keep working the locals. Maybe you put a little more booze in them and they'll get more talky."

* * *

A few hours later, they radioed the bad news back to Atlantis. "Definitely the Genii."

"You can tell that it's the Genii from one electrical generator?" Major Lorne asked skeptically.

Wesley's face had been grim since he pulled the generator control panel open. "After the time I spent on those nuclear devices, Major, I would know Genii engineering anywhere."

"All right. Stay there, but do not engage. Repeat, do not engage. Take up a position near the Stargate, watch to see if there's any traffic, report back in another twelve for updated orders."

"Yes, sir," Mal said, and signed off. Turning to his team, he said, "Well, looks like we're here for the night. Let's find a good campsite we can watch for the Genii from."

Wesley turned out to be almost as good as Gunn at finding a sheltered flat spot near the top of the hill for their camp, even though Mal did turn down his offer to build them a tent. They set up the ultralights they'd brought with them after the sun went down, and downed their MREs in relative silence, Wesley fiddling with his various reader devices and the other three watching the high ground where the Stargate stood. Mal let Gunn take the first watch, and went to sleep with fake Beef Stroganoff heavy in his stomach.

_The sun was hot overhead, flat and unforgiving. The air was dry, and Mal's lips were cracked, pieces of skin half-flaked off and itching. The city was quiet, the white-stuccoed buildings closest to him closed up and shuttered. He listened to his own breath, kept his heart rate constant and slow. He stayed crouched, ready, waiting. Finally a noise from a blind spot, around a corner, and he trained his rifle on the spot where someone coming towards him would have to show themselves. He waited. He breathed into it. A shriek, and a figure in a black burqa running towards the mosque, shrieking curses. He fired a warning shot that broke fragments off the wall next to her, but she kept coming, raising a fist with something clutched in it. He fired again, and this time he didn't miss. She fell to the street, and now the burqa was gone and he could see her face, and the ugly hole in her forehead, and her eyes staring vacantly, still angry._

He woke up, his heart pounding and something deep in his stomach spasming. Wesley was still sound asleep in the next sleeping bag, looking unexpectedly boyish in rest. Mal crawled out of the tent and relieved Gunn two hours ahead of schedule.

The night air was just cold enough to keep him awake, and he concentrated on bringing his heart rate back to normal and keeping it there. There were a few night birds chirping, and he tried to teach himself to distinguish between their calls to keep himself in the moment. When he heard a tent flap go up, he checked his watch, and was startled to see that five hours had already passed. "Corta. You can go back to sleep. I'm fine."

"I volunteered for off-world work, Captain," she said with a yawn. "I can take my turn like the others."

Mal shook his head. "It's not that. I'd just like to be alone."

Corta came out of her tent and sat down next to him. "What is the matter, Captain?"

"Nothing!" He tried not to edge away from her. "I'm fine." She stared at him disbelievingly, her eyes bright and wide in the darkness, until he caved. "I just couldn't sleep. Bad dreams."

"Dreams are often signs. Do you think --?"

"This wasn't a sign. It was a, a memory." Saying the word brought it back again, the sand and the heat and the boredom that was almost worse than action.

"Memories?" she asked. "Teyla makes your world sound like a paradise. What sort of memories could you have that would keep you up nights?"

"I was a killer." It felt almost like a relief to tell someone: his war record had gotten to Atlantis ahead of him. "I killed other humans. For my people."

"Were these people harming you?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes I killed them before they had a chance to harm anyone."

"There were a lot of them." This wasn't a question, but she sounded surprised anyhow.

"Yeah." There was bile in Mal's throat, but he kept talking. "There were a lot of them. We were in their home, their land, for no good goddamn reason that I ever understood, and I was killing them to keep them from killing me."

"Among my people, it is very rare for us to kill one another. We fight, and we learn to fight, but we do not kill." Corta sounded thoughtful, not condemning. "Perhaps it is because you have never faced the Wraith."

"What?"

"When you have never known a true enemy, it would be easier to think other harms were great enough to kill for."

"It's a little more complicated than that."

"I doubt it." She put a hand on his shoulder. "You are a good man, Captain. You will not kill anyone here but the Wraith."

Mal wasn't sure whether to envy her for her naiveté or thank her for her confidence. "Thank you," he said.

"And should you try, I will have to stop you. I cannot have people thinking you are a danger -- no one would ever trade with me again."

Mal smiled. "I promise I won't ever kill anyone who's trying to trade with you, Corta."

"Good," she said. "Though, given some of what the Littarans are weaving this harvest, I would not mind at all if you hurt them a bit. Lace! What are they _thinking_?"

 

* * *

 

Corta eventually went back to sleep, and even Mal felt drowsy enough to give Wesley the last watch before the sun woke them all. It was only a couple hours until their next check-in time, so Mal was ready to just settle in and wait, but Wesley stopped him before he'd even finished his breakfast power bar. "Captain, we must talk. I've made some very intriguing findings this morning."

"This morning? Are we talking about the time when you were supposed to be making sure we weren't all killed in our sleep?"

Wesley looked embarrassed, but was still insistent. "It's hardly as though I was off doing field research, Captain. I had been getting anomalous results from the energy reader ever since we came to M5R-3X5, and I finally discovered why while I was on watch. It's uranium."

"There's uranium here?" Mal looked around: the greenery didn't seem mutated, but who could tell on a foreign world? "Are we safe?"

"We're fine: it would have to be processed to be truly dangerous, and besides I'm only getting trace readings on this hill. But it's possible there's a richer vein somewhere not far away. That would explain what the Genii are doing handing out generators to the local pubs."

"Good work, Wes." There'd be something worthwhile to report back to Major Lorne about, which Mal didn't mind at all. "But if you let your mind wander on watch again, I'll bench you permanently."

Wyndam-Price had grinned smugly at the praise, but Mal's warning left him looking peevish and disappointed. "I say, Captain, it's hardly -"

At the top of the hill, the Stargate engaged. "Go!" Mal called, and his team scattered into their positions. When the wormhole opened, two men and a woman in the Genii uniforms came through, talking happily amongst themselves. Mal signaled to Gunn to stay close to them, and tried to convey to the others that they should stay where they were. They seemed to be getting the message.

The Genii were halfway to the town when one of them turned and started to jog back towards the Stargate. Mal swore and pressed himself more firmly into the weeds he'd hidden in. Near where he'd left the other two, he saw the Genii stop and look searchingly into the trees. Corta's shawl was visible even from where Mal was. He signaled to Gunn again, telling him to stay with the main group, and crawled as fast as he could towards the hilltop.

When he got there, Wesley and Corta were already fighting the Genii. The two of them together were battling the man for control of his rifle, and they looked to be winning until he let them back him into a tree, which he used for leverage to throw them both off the weapon. Wesley fell to the ground and rolled over a couple of times before he got back up to his feet and struck a dramatic martial-arts pose. The Genii pointed his weapon at Wes, and even if Mal hadn't known the look of someone frozen by fear of a rifle, he would have recognized it now. Corta reached into some sort of pocket on the back of her dress, and pulled out a shorter set of the same Athosian fighting sticks Sheppard had been so hepped up about the troops learning to use. She looked ready to throw one at the Genii. That wasn't going to help. Mal breathed into it, and tackled the man from behind.

He'd been crouching in his hiding spot, so he only managed to grab the Genii by his knees, but with the strongest pull he could manage, that was still enough to get the man to let go of his rifle so he could use his hands to break the fall. "Get it!" Mal shouted, and Wesley ran for the weapon and kicked it away. Mal bit back a groan. The Genii twisted beneath him and kicked at his chest. The pain loosened Mal's hold enough that the Genii was able to scramble out of his grip and halfway to his feet. Corta swung at the man hard, two-handed like a batter, sending him staggering backwards again, and Mal grabbed him and put him in a chokehold. He made something of a show of making sure the guy was still breathing after he finally went down, for Corta's sake.

"Nice work," said Wes.

"Thanks." Mal was still breathing hard, and he was going to have one hell of a bruise in the morning. "You too. Both of you. Corta, nobody told me anything about you being a fighter."

"I am not." She looked pleased. "But did you think a woman who works with her hands would be weak?"

They used the guylines from the tents to secure their new prisoner against a tree, and when he came to, Mal gave him his best stone-killer face. "You're gonna tell me what the Genii are up to here, or you're going to be very sorry you left home."

"What do you think, you stupid Atlantean?" The man spat, only missing Mal's feet by an inch or so. "We've been working twice as hard as we used to since we made that miserable deal with your leaders."

"Your leaders didn't think it was so stupid," Mal said.

"That was before they knew you were softheaded enough to blow the city of the Ancestors to pieces before we learned anything about the success of the prototypes!"

"You think those prototypes were anything to be proud of?" Wes asked. "They were incomplete! The ignition mechanisms were improperly fused, and –"

"Wes!" Mal made a cut-it-out motion with his hand.

The Genii was turning red with anger. "Now that we know some of you have survived, we will hunt you down, wherever you've gone, and we will finish what the Wraith began."

"The hell you will." The easy thing to do would have been to take his pistol out of its ankle holster and finish this, but Corta was watching, and he didn't want her to see him kill someone, not yet. "You come at us, you'll be sorry. Tell your boss." Gunn was coming up the hill now, moving faster than anyone should've been able to in a crouch. "That is, if he comes back for you. Come on, guys, let's go."

Mal signaled to Gunn to meet them at the Stargate, and they grabbed their packs to go. Wesley dropped his again, and went up to the Genii, who was still struggling against his bonds. "And this," he said, "is for being cad enough to hit a lady." And he hit the man hard in the face, hard enough that his head snapped back and hit the tree and he was out again.

"That guy hit you?" Mal asked.

Corta shrugged. "I was fine." She was trying for nonchalant, but when she looked over at Wesley, her grateful smile made him flush and turn away.

 

* * *

 

Colonel Sheppard had called Dr. Weir in for Mal's debrief, and she'd thanked him and shook his hand at the end of it. Mal said, "The others deserve most of the thanks, ma'am," and the colonel had given him a little lopsided smile and sent him off to lunch.

The mess hall was crowded with the lunch rush, groups of Marines and scientists clustered at their separate tables like high schoolers. Mal got some stew and two dinner rolls from the Athosian woman working the hot line, and found himself a place to sit as far from the hubbub as he could manage. Too many people, too much noise, and he couldn't help but scan the crowd for hostiles even at home. Off to the side of the room, it was easier to just focus on his stew, which was warm and filling and spiced with something like pepper, only better.

"So, you gotta tell me something, Captain," Gunn said, sliding into the seat across from his. "How is it that on a team made up of flyboys, Marines, and guys from places I can't pronounce, you're Army?"

"I was eating," Mal said.

"Don't stop on my account, sir. I'm just asking a question."

Mal sighed. "My last stint in Iraq, I came home with a bunch of medals, and a few friends at the Pentagon. They said I could pick where I wanted to go for my next rotation, and I said I didn't care as long as it was as far from Baghdad as they could get me."

"Gotta be more careful how you phrase things with those people." Gunn smiled and dug a spoonful of stew from his bowl.

"I noticed that. A little late."

"Can't all be smart enough for the Marine Corps, sir."

"For this relief, much thanks," said Wesley. He'd managed to stack a remarkable amount of food onto his tray for such a scrawny-looking man, with double servings of almost everything, and the arrangement looked dangerously unbalanced. Gunn used a foot to slide out a chair for him, and he settled into it with a sigh of gratitude. "Where were the smart Marines when I needed help moving three naquadah generators out of the lab this morning?"

"Smart enough to be somewhere else," Gunn said, and threw a small silvery square -- was that _chocolate_? -- at Wesley, who caught it gracefully and pocketed it with a grin.

"Yes," he said, "well, when the military wants, oh, I don't know, _electricity_ , we'll see how smart they are then."

"You know, I generally eat alone," Mal said.

"The stew is quite good," Wesley said. "It's a nice change after those MREs."

"I know," said Gunn. "I might go for seconds."

"There you are!" said Corta. She hit Wesley lightly on the shoulder with the brown-paper-wrapped package she was carrying. "Wesley, you have chosen the most remote part of the mess hall. No one will be able to properly admire my new dress."

And she did look quite lovely: the dress skimmed loosely over her body, defining her curves without constricting. Over it, Mal noted, she wore a lace cardigan.

"I'm sure everyone will be looking at you wherever you're seated," Wesley said, getting up to pull out a chair for her. "Try the stew."

"Oh, is that Leyna's stew? I love that. Thank you!" Corta took the second bowl from Wesley's tray and smiled. "Captain, I am so glad we are having a team luncheon. I have a gift for you."

"A...? You didn't have to do that."

"But I wanted to. Is it inappropriate? Charles did not think it would be."

"Of course not," Mal said. He glared at Gunn, who looked way too unrepentant. "Thank you."

The brown paper package was heavier than it looked, and wrapped tightly. "I would preferred to have made it from a broadcloth," Corta said as he worked the wrapping, "but it is the tradition of my people..."

"Hush," said Wesley. "He'll love it."

And he did. God, he did. It was a coat, a perfect long black coat, made of some sort of dyed black leathered hide. He stood up to put it on: it fell just about to his knees, and it fit perfectly. He turned to the left and to the right experimentally, and the coat billowed out a bit behind him before it floated back against his body. "It's... it's great. Thank you."

"It suits you, Captain," said Wesley.

"That it does," said Gunn. "Though I can't say it's regulation, sir."

"No, it's not. Might still come in handy to have a good coat offworld, though."

Corta looked like she might explode from pleasure. "It is my interpretation of the traditional outer coat of my people. I thought that perhaps if you looked more like an Athosian, you might find it easier to think like one as well."

The kindness of the gesture hit him hard in the chest, and made him swallow. He looked at the three of them: Gunn amused, Wesley pleased, Corta still so excited, and all of them looking up at him. His team. "You guys. I... I mean..." He took a deep breath, and tried again. "Thanks."

"The captain thinking like an Athosian -- this isn't about to lead to us all living in a hut on the mainland, is it?" Gunn asked. "Because I like my bed bug-free."

Corta rolled her eyes. "Yes, and a man who spent an hour this morning explaining to me how he survived in a ditch in a desert is truly the one I look to for tips on gracious living."

"Which reminds me," Wesley said, "that I found some schematics for what looks very much like an automated loom in the Ancient database. Dr. Zelenka has agreed to help me try to build it."

Corta just stared at him for a minute, then threw her arms around him with a shriek of joy piercing enough to turn heads at other tables. Wesley grinned, and Mal couldn't help smiling in return.

"Uh, I just wanted to say, you know, um," Mal stammered, and the others turned to listen to him, their faces warmly expectant. He wished he knew the words for the feelings they inspired in him. "Uh, I'm going to get some dessert. And if you guys want, I can bring some back for you."

There was a moment when the three of them seemed to catch each other's eyes before they nodded and gave him their orders, so he thought maybe they understood what he wanted to say. "OK," he said, and he headed back into the crowds by the food stations, looking for four servings of chocolate pudding.


End file.
